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Our journey into the future is never ending. It begins at the moment of our birth and continues forever.
Until now, we have viewed ourselves as "victims" of the future, having to accept whatever life dishes out for us. However, it doesn't have to be that way.
This book is based on breakthrough tools and techniques that you can use to gain some measure of control over the future.
Unlike books of mysticism that require a leap of faith, "Communicating with the Future" is based on a well-established cutting edge business practices. And yes, this is a proven methodology for controlling the future... well, parts of it.

More About the Author

"The greatest value in understanding the future comes from spotting the major cultural, demographic, societal, and economic shifts early and translating them into viable business strategies," says Tom.

As the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, Tom works closely with the Institute's Senior Fellows and Board of Visionaries to develop original research studies, which enables him to speak on unusual topics, translating trends into unique opportunities.

GOOGLE'S TOP RATED FUTURIST SPEAKER

As part of the celebrity speaking circuit, Tom continually pushes the envelope of understanding, headlining events with some of today's most recognizable figures: Tom Peters, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus; former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giulliani; Former President of Colombia, Andrés Pastrana; Prime Minister of Spain, Felipe González Márquez; Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz; Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal; and former World Bank President James Wolfensohn.

Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, the Boulder Daily Camera has referred to him as the "Father of Invention". The Denver Post and Seattle Post Intelligencer have referred to him as the "Dean of Futurists".

Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Thomas spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer. He is also a past member of the Triple Nine Society (High I.Q. society over 99.9 percentile).

Thomas has been featured in hundreds of articles for both national and international publications including New York Times, Huffington Post, Times of India, USA Today, US News and World Report, The Futurist Magazine, Morning Calm (in-flight magazine for Korean Airlines), Skylife (in-flight magazine for Turkish Airlines), ColoradoBiz Magazine, Rocky Mountain News, and many more. He currently writes a weekly "Future Trend Report" newsletter and a weekly column on FuturistSpeaker.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This book is full of unique and interesting ideas on how to shape your own destiny. The author uses interesting personal experience and insight to offer ways you can create a future of your own design. It is a fun read and a useful tool for today's (and tomorrow's) business world.

Review by Steve Baker - Tom Frey has written a very interesting and thought-provoking way to examine how to direct the future. As Tom writes, "Our vision of the future creates our actions today." He explains how we can create attractors to the future in an easy to follow guide. The book is easy to read and at the same time you will find yourself reading a section, contemplating the ideas, re-reading and then having some AHA moments. Communicating With The Future is an important book for planning in business and in our personal lives. As one of the top-rated futurists in the world, Tom is a highly intelligent deep thinker but he is also down to earth with a good sense of humor that shines through in his writing. I think this book should become a college course for future leaders.

When first encountering the premise of the book, I found it incredible. But after much thought I believe we can communicate with the future. The author spends time explaining the premise in a very understandable way. I beleive we all have been communicating with the future, but I now have a deeper understaning on how to make that communication more effective. Brilliant!

I really wanted to like this book. I had read some blog posts by the author which I found intriguing and they lead me to the book. Then all the five star reviews here convinced me to buy the book. Sadly, that's where the party ended.

Even though it is a relatively short book it's probably five times longer than it needs to be. It does start out on a high note, though, which is why I give it two stars.

The author begins by explaining that we communicate with and create the future by putting down ideas (a vision of how the future can be) today and that, with time, certain ideas will gain support, be built upon and eventually turn into reality. (Looking at the old Star Trek episodes we can see examples of this.) The visionary uses "attractors" to help clarify the vision and let people latch onto it. The vision-attractor duo gets the ball on the future rolling today and help it to build steam and become a future reality. This was interesting. And this takes us through chapter 3, which is where I would stop were I reading it again. (And I'd cut out over half of what's in these first three chapters.)

The book is begging to be structured better. (And it aches from grammar mistakes!)

The author should use the first chapter to lay out the framework (such that it is) that the rest of the book will then fill in. It was confusing because the author did not apply his own framework to his predictions in a systematic way. Instead, he bounces between explaining his framework and telling us his version of the future. This causes him to do a poor job of both explaining how he thinks about the future and what he thinks about it.Read more ›

We met Thomas Frey and his delightful wife, Deb, at the Education and Innovation: Forum II conference in Ankara, Turkey. Thomas gave the opening keynote for the two-day conference. Additionally, we were treated to spending several days with Thomas and Deb seeing the sights and touring schools.

Thomas is the Founder and Director of The DaVinci Institute in Colorado. The Institute owes much of its success to the energy, organizational skills and brains of Deb! They are wonderful people.

I have just received a copy of the book, and I am finding in it a great deal of food for thought. I believe that it would be an excellent choice for a campus or district study/reading/discussion group. Educators tend to get "stuck" in their world, and lately (for about 10 bad years) it has been a world of standardized testing. When the NCLB came in, creativity, joy, exploration and learning left.

Education is literally critical to our national and financial security. It should also be an experience which nurtures the whole child. This book provides tools we can use to deliberately shift paradigms, which will then enable us to create real change and an educational experience for our students preparing them for success and happiness in the 21st century.

As Mustafa Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey said, "Teachers are the one and only people who can save nations."

"Communicating with the Future" is book that is short on words but long on impact. My kind of book. Thomas Frey does a great job of using stories to make his point, but some of his thinking is so profound you'll want to write it on the wall or carry it around in your wallet. One phrase that particularly caught my attention was, "If your next project is not aligned with the problems needs or desires of the future, the future is going to kill it!"

So how do you align your thinking with that of te future? The way he looks at it, the future is a force of nature, and our ability to interact with it, coupled with our ability to communicate with it, gives it human-like attributes. In the end, it is our relationship with the future that will determine where we end up in life.